


when the music stops, we'll still be dancing [together]

by andibeth82



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: All the bow metaphors, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Ballet, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Ballet, Developing Relationship, Emotional Baggage, F/M, First Meetings, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 05:30:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She moves gracefully and easily, and while it’s certainly mesmerizing, she’s too far away for him to make out anything specific about her features. The only thing he does manage to catch are the strands of red hair glinting off the spotlight, spilling onto her back in a sea of loose curls, a brush of distinctive color against her jet black leotard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when the music stops, we'll still be dancing [together]

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SugarFey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SugarFey/gifts).



> _"Natasha is the new prima ballerina at the Mariinsky Ballet (or Bolshoi Ballet, either one)."_ Written for the **be_compromised** 2014 Valentine's Promptathon.
> 
> Thank you to [bobsessive](bobsessive.tumblr.com) and [enigma731](http://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731) for beta and support - this is better because of you.
> 
>  _But everything was beautiful at the ballet..._  
>  \- A Chorus Line

Clint’s on break, sitting in the back of the orchestra with his legs up on the chair in front of him, when the question surfaces.

“You meet the new girl yet?” The flutist asks, kneeling down to unpack his instrument on the next chair. “She just transferred over to replace Vinkurov. Real beauty; natural, too. Can’t believe she’s never danced in the big leagues before.”

Clint shrugs, moving his feet to the floor as he sits up a little straighter. “Don’t generally pay attention to the prima ballerinas,” he replies, twirling his violin bow between his fingers, using it to draw lazy circles against his calf. His friend smirks, nodding towards the stage.

“Well, you’re gonna wanna pay attention to this one.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?” Clint asks, turning and following his gaze, where he can just barely make out a slim figure stretching and twirling in the otherwise empty space. She moves gracefully and easily, and while it’s certainly mesmerizing, she’s too far away for him to make out anything specific about her features. The only thing he does manage to catch are the strands of red hair glinting off the spotlight, spilling onto her back in a sea of loose curls, a brush of distinctive color against her jet black leotard.

“Girl’s got something special…can’t take your eyes off her.”

Clint shifts in his chair, moving his attention from the stage for the time being. “Well, lucky for you, I’m off the market.” He smiles in a way that he hopes is at least halfway convincing, given the fact that it’s mostly a lie, because when it comes down to it, Kate’s definitely more of a friend than a girlfriend. But it isn’t like they haven’t danced around the subject, albeit jokingly, since meeting at the local bar a few years before - her taking pity on him after a shameless pick-up attempt that resulted in too many drinks and too many shared secrets.

“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. Just looking out for the front man.” The flutist closes his case, getting to his feet. “By the way, good luck playing later. The boys are already making bets on who’s gonna be the first one to get distracted in the pit.”

Clint chuckles, picking up his violin, letting his long fingers pluck deftly at the strings until they produce a thin twang of sound, one that he knows is noticeable to him and only him. “Thanks for the warning,” he returns with a wry grin, though he’s not really thankful at all.

 

***

 

The thing is, Clint really _doesn’t_ pay attention to the girls in the ballet company. He knows enough from his time in this job that professional and personal lives don’t necessarily mix; he’s seen it firsthand and he’s dealt with enough of his fellow orchestra members’ break-ups and late night drinking binges to know that he never wants to experience his own. Clint’s mind has always gravitated more towards the parts than the sum of the whole, anyway, at least where this whole profession is concerned. And he would rather spend time losing himself in his work, in the complexity of the music he produces and in the beauty of the craft he watches, than get tangled up with one of Bolshoi’s finest, all of whom tend to be on the spoiled side. Even prima ballerinas.

 _Especially_ prima ballerinas.

So he’s not sure why he finds himself standing in the shadow of the wings long after his break is over, watching this newest addition, when he could be sleeping or taking a walk or even sitting at home with a drink, as his apartment is conveniently located a stone’s throw from their rehearsal space. It’s one of the perks that comes with his position of being first violinist, and, Clint suspects, designed to make sure other companies don’t snatch him up and leave the orchestra high and dry of their best talent.

Clint leans against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest as he surveys the scene in front of him. Most girls, he knows, would sooner show off than make a connection; he’s observed them enough to know how they react if they know that someone (particularly another man) is watching. But this girl seems oblivious to his presence, barely pausing as she flies across the floor, the slopes of her toes skirting effortlessly over the massive expanse of stage as if she were a goddess walking on water, leaving barely a ripple of movement in her wake. He’s no stranger to seeing girls who are talented, who make the years of hard training and blood-soaked toes and sleepless nights look as natural as drawing air, but this is different. Natural, yes, but there’s also a distinct feeling of elegance, of beauty and of exceptional stealth that he knows he’s never seen in anyone else, much less those who apparently haven’t danced in a large company before. He feels his breath catch in his throat without thinking, because as much as he hates to admit it, his friend was right – she really _does_ have something special.

“Why are you watching me?” She asks quietly when she stops moving, and he’s been so lost in his own thoughts that he almost hasn’t seen her appear in front of him, wide childlike eyes framed by the same mess of ruddy curls he first spotted from a distance sometime earlier. Caught off guard and unsure how to respond, Clint suddenly feels a bit – or rather, a lot – like an idiot.

“I, uh…” He searches for words that seem to escape him, fumbling to figure out how to not sound overly creepy or rude. “I just wanted to meet you,” he finishes lamely, holding out his hand in an attempt to recover. “I’m the first violinist here.”

“Oh.” The girl looks down, smoothing out the wrinkles of her leotard, hands edging over her slim waist before reaching out to accept his grip. “And do you personally meet all your new dancers by stalking them?”

Clint laughs, surprised at the reaction, at how easily it comes out out given the fact that he was almost unable to respond just moments before. “Only the ones that catch my eye.”

She returns his comments with a small smile, gliding gracefully down to the floor to unlace her pointe shoes, sliding her foot out with practiced ease and pulling on a thin pair of socks. Clint blinks as she removes the shoe, finding a space in the rafters where he can focus his gaze until he’s sure she’s finished. He’s used to the mangled toes and the cuts and the bruises – all part of the price you paid to be the best of the best – but for some reason the scars on her skin make him feel uneasy, as if they’re something she didn’t ask for and didn’t want. It’s perhaps her quietness that tugs at his apprehension, as most girls would proudly display their self-proclaimed war wounds, bragging about how much they danced and how many blisters they’ve broken. This girl, however, seems to be the opposite, and he senses that she wants to hide her mutilations, almost as if she’s ashamed of them.

“So what’s your name?” She asks when she looks at him again, getting up to stand tall in front of him, curious green irises boring into his own dark ones. He swallows.

“Clint Barton. And you’re…”

“Natalia. Natalia Romanova.” Her voice is a delicate drawl, a cross between soothing and inquisitive, a hushed smoky tenor completely unlike the usual high-pitched tones he’s used to hearing come out of most ballerinas’ mouths. “You can call me Natasha, if you want. I just transferred over from the Ballet du Capitole…this is my first day with Bolshoi.”

“Toulouse,” Clint says instantly, and she nods in response, almost approvingly, as he purses his lips. “Heard you were pretty good over there.” He feels bad about lying not because he doesn’t believe it – hell, of _course_ he believes it – but because he actually knows nothing about her other than the information he learned earlier. She smiles again, this time more tightly, though he can tell she’s starting to warm up to their conversation.

“I was okay,” she says, picking up a leg and casually stretching it behind her head, her body barely shifting as she does so. “It was a good place to start, but I wasn’t very happy so I decided to try and make a switch. Learn someplace new. But, you know.” She releases her leg and stands straight again, offering a shrug. “It’s all the same, really, in the end.”

“Yes.” Clint swallows, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “Well, uh. I hope you like it here. You probably know that the orchestra and dancers don’t do much together, at least, not until performance time. But since I’m the concertmaster, I have a little more involvement than most, so you’ll probably be seeing me around.”

“I should hope so,” she says, her eyes shining with a glint of something he can’t quite read, the rest of her look saying, very plainly, _“yes, of course I know; that’s what being a concertmaster means.”_ Before he can kick himself appropriately, she picks up her bag and her shoes, pushing her feet into dark green sneakers as she tugs at her hair, wrapping it around her left shoulder and letting short tendrils curl around her cheek.

“It was very nice to meet you, Clint Barton.” Her fingers grab his and he smiles while they shake for what feels like eternity, until Clint finally lets go, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“You too, Natalia Romanova.”

 

***

 

The afternoon rehearsal runs longer than usual, thanks to an influx of new music and a late start time, and by the time his fellow orchestra members are packing up their instruments and heading home, Clint’s surprised to find himself feeling slightly relieved. Usually he’s content to stay as long as he needs to, far surpassing the hours of anyone else in the name of working out a new piece of music, or helping someone with a particular stumbling block. But tonight, he finds himself more antsy than usual when the music ends, his hands and brain searching for something else to fixate on when everything has stopped and quiet settles in his ears, save for the sound of inaudible chatter and the scraping of chairs against the floor.

“Good work today, Barton.” The cellist claps him on the shoulder as he walks towards the door with a smile. “Really looking forward to this piece. See you tomorrow.”

Clint gives a small wave as he packs up his own instrument, dawdling as much as he can so that maybe no one no one will notice that he’s also trying to move quicker than usual at the same time. Dancers, he knows in the back of his mind, have irregularly arranged rehearsal times thanks to their schedules, though more often than not the two sides overlap just enough – mostly so that in case of an emergency, one group can use the other for practice purposes. Still, he’s not entirely optimistic that anyone will be around this late, especially on a Friday night in the middle of February.

Clint snaps the clasp shut on his violin case and shrugs on his jacket, locking the door to the orchestra room as he ascends the stairs. Pausing at the top of the second floor, he sneaks a peek down the hallway that he knows leads to the dressing rooms, his eyes straining for a glimpse of any kind of movement or life. Seeing nothing but darkness and a few tightly closed doors with slivers of light radiating from underneath, he feels his heart sink slightly.

And then he sees her, the flash of her red hair reflected in one of the mirrors at the end of the hall. She’s dancing by herself, in the dark, in front of the glass, just her and her alone, her flight fluid and practiced as arms and legs slice through obscurity with the skill and precision of a knife.

He doesn’t move and doesn’t speak, instead slips quietly into the shadows and watches, while his fingers silently calculate and construct a tune in time to the depth of her movements.

 

***

 

When Clint arrives at the rehearsal space the next morning, he’s surprised to find a freshly made cup of coffee waiting at his desk, along with a folded piece of white paper. He puts down his instrument case and opens the note carefully, revealing swirled handwriting he’s not familiar with that spells out the words _“Room 304.”_

Clint smiles to himself, pockets the message, and takes a sip of coffee before throwing his jacket over the chair and heading up the winding stairs. While the ground floor is mostly reserved for orchestra space and the second houses the performance dressing rooms, the third floor is unintentionally blocked off, old and abandoned training rooms sometimes used for practice spaces, or, more routinely, places for people to nap during a particularly grueling rehearsal week.

“You just don’t quit, do you?” She asks almost as soon as he walks into the room where she’s been doing her warm-ups, again in the dark, her body half hidden by the door. He mutely shakes his head, doesn’t ask how she knows he was there last night and Natasha sighs, grabbing a towel and wiping it over her face.

“Let me make this easy on you, Barton. It _was_ Barton, wasn’t it?”

Clint nods silently again, and she frowns.

“Dancing is my life right now, just as I’m sure being a concertmaster is yours. Both are important, vital to any workings of a successful company. And we didn’t get to where we are by sitting on our hands.” She stops, standing up from the mat. “So I’m sure you can understand why I don’t want to get myself into any kind of situation that would ultimately hinder that.”

Clint lets out a breath he hasn’t realized he’s been holding, a loud rush of air in the otherwise silent room.

“Good,” she says, returning to her practice, arching up on her toes and holding a pose he thinks that, by all standards, should be impossible. He’s completely thrown by her assessment of the situation and has no idea whether she’s waiting for him to leave, to make a comment, or if he should just ignore her speech entirely. While his mind is still mulling over how to put words together in an appropriate response, his mouth makes a split second decision that he instantly hopes he doesn’t regret.

“Let me take you to dinner.”

She comes off her pose, staring at him, and in the dark he can just barely make out the arch of her brow as it rises into her forehead.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he replies with as much conviction as he can muster, mostly because this goes against everything he’s told himself he would never do. _If only the boys could see me now_ , he thinks as she looks down, biting her bottom lip. Her hesitancy sparks something inside of him, a sudden feeling of being desperately scared at the prospect of her refusal.

“Come on,” he coaxes as gently as he can. “I promise I’m not trying to pick you up or anything…I just want to talk. Concertmaster to new prima ballerina.”

She seems to soften at that, something changing in her gaze as she looks up, and he watches the muscles in her face shift with an emotion that seems almost foreign.

“Fine.”

It’s his cue to leave, he knows, so he moves quickly out of the room and closes the door behind him, trying not to dwell on the ghost of the smile he’s sure he saw creeping across her face before she had time to turn away.

 

***

 

The restaurant is only a few blocks from their rehearsal space, which he figures works on all accounts – familiarity for both of them in terms of the area, and close to his home if he needs to somehow make an embarrassed escape. Clint arrives ten minutes early, putting what he hopes is a safe distance between “fashionably late” and “overwhelmingly prompt,” and finds himself fiddling with his fingers uneasily as he waits. He eyes the door with a nervousness he’s unaccustomed to feeling, his stomach working its way into his throat until she pushes past a patron with greying hair and a long, dark coat.

Clint feels his breath catch in his throat the same way it did the first time he saw her practicing alone on stage, with only the lights and some props to keep her company. She’s not overdressed, and she’s not even wearing make-up – at least, no more than he’s used to seeing her wear during practice sessions. Yet the simple dress combined with freshly washed curls cascading over her shoulders, as well as her natural beauty, is enough to make him feel like he’s been socked in the stomach.

“You look great,” he manages, leaning over to kiss her chastely. She smiles, letting his lips just barely graze the skin of her cheek before pulling away.

“Thanks for the invitation. It’s actually nice to get a night off, when I think about it. I spend so much time at the studio…sometimes I think all I do is practice, because I don’t know much of anything else.”

“Glad to be of service, then,” Clint says as the waiter directs them to their table, pulling out her chair and immediately filling their wine glasses halfway. She moves her head to the side slightly as she picks up her drink.

“I’d imagine it’s the same for you.”

“Yeah…kind of,” Clint answers quickly, reaching for his own glass before she can continue, because it isn’t so much about not knowing anything else, it’s more about not _having_ anything else. _Why waste time being someplace that makes me unhappy?_ Clint asked himself once, before he started spending less time at home and more time at work, because at least work makes him feel like he’s doing something halfway useful with his life.

“So what’s your story?”

Clint clutches the stem of his wine glass a little more tightly. “Who says I have a story?” he asks, feigning surprise. Natasha rolls her eyes.

“Come on, Clint Barton. Everyone in this profession has a story, and if I’m going to take time out of my night to sit here and let you pay for my dinner, I deserve to hear it.”

Clint huffs out a nervous breath as he reaches for his napkin, letting the coarse fabric settle between his fingernails.

“I used to be with the circus, when I was younger. An older company called Carson’s Traveling Wonders; they focused on tricks of the trade rather than those showy, Big Top animal type things.” He waves his hand around, placing the napkin on his lap. “Me and my brother, Barney, we got good at some of them, and I became pretty proficient in archery. Just, you know, natural with my hands, I guess. They gave me an act, called me Hawkeye - the Great Amazing Archer. Or something like that.”

“Hawkeye.” One half or her mouth drags upwards in a smile. “Like a bird?”

“Guess so.” Clint shrugs. “Anyway, well, one day I couldn’t find my bow and got bored waiting for someone to tell me what to do, so I picked up a violin from one of the old ladies who ran a fortune telling gig. And the rest is history.” Clint shrugs, unsure as to why he’s suddenly able to so easily spew out a story that he’s never really talked about, save for in his head. Even Kate doesn’t know half the stuff associated with his past.

“So, the ballet, then,” Natasha says, and Clint nods.

“Left the circus a few years later and came to Russia. Had a friend who let me live with him for a bit, he got me a spot as assistant conductor here a few years ago and I worked my way up the ranks.”

“You’re probably the only American in this company who doesn’t speak Russian,” Natasha says with a hint of teasing as she takes a sip of wine, and Clint chuckles.

“Never learned. Never had to, really, what with keeping to myself and all. Music is pretty much the only language I need to communicate.”

She’s staring at him with something akin to sympathy, but it’s more than that – empathy, maybe. Clint’s seen sympathetic eyes before, and he can recognize them like the back of his hand, but as much as Natasha’s are deeply sorrowful, they’re also kind: understanding while offering a silent apology that he knows comes with the territory of broken pasts. He pushes thoughts of his somewhat sorry life out of his mind and takes a long drink.

“What about you?” He asks finally, coming up for air. “Why did you decide to become a dancer?”

He’s expecting the patented answer, perhaps one a little more interesting given her personality – a parent or role model had pushed her into performing, being a ballerina was her life’s dream and goal, dancing with the most prestigious company in Russia was all she ever wanted. But when he meets her eyes again, waiting on her response, there’s something in her pupils that seems confused, regretful and even a little sad.

“I don’t know,” she says honestly, seemingly folding in on herself as her voice drops. “It just seemed like it was something I was destined to do. What I was always supposed to do.” She looks down at her hands, and Clint finds himself fascinated with the way she conveys so much emotion without changing her tone or even her facial expression.

“You’re good at it,” he offers, watching her smile at her hands.

“It felt right, and I didn’t really know how to do anything else coming out of school. I thought about traveling the world, and ended up getting recruited into a program called the Red Room – they train a lot of ballerinas outside of Russia, a highly specialized program for girls like me who need extensive and accelerated training.” She pauses, and Clint’s mind immediately backtracks to the scars he noticed the first day he watched her practice, the uncomfortable feeling that had settled in his stomach at the instinctual thought that something just wasn’t quite right about her injuries as opposed to others that he’d seen.

“How long did you train for?” He asks, wondering if she’ll even answer, surprised when she does.

“Three years,” Natasha shakes back a wave of red. “Every day for three years, until I started auditioning for any company that would have me. And here I am.” She finishes by taking a drink, raising her glass slightly. “Prima ballerina. Bolshoi. Guess you could say I got everything I ever wanted.”

He can’t see his own face but he can tell the sad smirk is a reflection of her own, and he raises his glass as their eyes level. It’s strange measure of support they’re providing each other with, one that he knows can’t be done with words.

“Yeah. Me too.”

 

***

 

It would have been Clint’s decision to forgo dessert in the name of not being overly hungry by the end of the meal, but Natasha grabs the menu before he can protest and orders them both a cake with light soufflé, topped with a dark glaze.

“It’s Bird Milk’s cake,” she says later on their walk back from the restaurant, a hint of amusement in her tone. “And the restaurant is quite famous for it. Six years in Russia, living basically next door to Bolshoi, and I can’t believe you’ve never tried it.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you spend all your time practicing,” Clint replies only half jokingly, easing himself down on the steps of the theater and hugging his arms around his chest as the winter cold settles into his bones. She lowers herself next to him, crossing two long legs.

“We can go somewhere else if you’re cold,” she suggests, eyeing him out of her peripheral vision. Clint shrugs, shivering slightly.

“It’s really okay.” He points a frozen finger across the street, its trajectory sticking its landing on the outline of a small and slightly dilapidated building. “I live just over there, so it’s not exactly a long commute to home.”

Natasha follows the line of his arm, staring a little too long into the distance before wrapping her own arms around her legs.

“What’s the real reason?”

“Excuse me?” He sits up straighter, and Natasha turns to meet his gaze head-on, her eyes bare and honest.

“The real reason you practice so much,” she repeats simply, as if she’s asking him his favorite food and not one of the most personal questions he thinks could exist. “What is it?”

He doesn’t know what pushes him to respond, why he speaks without even thinking about it - there’s something in her voice that coaxes him to reply, and whether it’s intentional or not, her words hit at something in his heart.

“There’s nothing for me at home,” he says quietly, moving his arms to place his hands on his knees. “Not really. Bolshoi’s the only good thing I have, and I’m good at what I do. So I do it. I do my job, I feel good, and that’s it. Not a whole lot more to life, is there?”

Natasha turns her gaze towards the streets, pushing hair back from her eyes. “There’s a lot more to life,” she says quietly, lacing their hands together without thinking. He looks down in surprise, but says nothing, keeping their grip entwined.

“And yet you spend all your time dancing in a dark room.”

“Not all the time,” Natasha responds carefully with the same sense of quiet, as if she’s choosing which parts of herself she wants to reveal, carefully selecting each memory or moment the way someone would browse through a store of collectible items. “The dark helps me think, though. I don’t really like the stage lights…they’re too bright. They make me remember things that I don’t really want to think about. But the dark…” She trails off, pulling her hand away almost as arbitrarily as she had grabbed it. “You can hide in the dark. There’s no one to see you. Or control you.”

Clint chews hard on his tongue, staring straight ahead as the cold washes over him, though he suddenly feels like he can’t sense it anymore. “Why me?” He asks when he speaks again, because it’s suddenly hitting him, the weight of what he’s revealed to her without even knowing why. Natasha takes his hand again.

“Concertmaster to new prima ballerina?” She shrugs almost shyly, and, he thinks, with a bit of resignation. “What can I say? I like getting to know the people whose music I’m going to be dancing to.”

 

***

 

He says goodbye at the corner and kisses her cheek again, but notes that this time, she doesn’t turn away quite so easily. He’d consider that a victory, he thinks, if he didn’t feel so damn confused and miserable about everything, wishing he could tell her to stay but knowing that’s well out of both their comfort zones right now.

“Rehearsal tomorrow,” is all she says as she squeezes his hand, and then she’s gone, disappearing into the dark as if she never even existed at all, as if the entire night was something out of a dream. Clint scrubs a hand across his face as he unlocks the door to his apartment, flicking on the light to reveal a bare, empty room. He blinks rapidly into the brightness, as if he’s seeing the space clearly for the first time.

There’s a bed in the corner, a fridge and dishwasher in the kitchen area, and a small couch just big enough for one in the space he blocks off for his living room. But there are no photos or adornments on the blank walls, none of his mementos from the circus and no photos with Barney, or any of his archery competition awards, or notices of the many honors and accolades that he’s received with the orchestra. Clint glances around, thinks of the mess of boxes pushed under the bed, the fact that he never even thought to unpack them since arriving six years ago, and the fact that even most of his clothes haven’t found a place outside of the laundry basket.

He reaches for the light again and flips down the switch, enveloping himself and the room in blackness, being careful as he walks not to trip over his violin case, which stands upright by the door next to a few extra bags full of sheet music. Retrieving it and bringing it back to the couch, he opens it by feel, his fingers dancing over the bow and the strings, the smooth hollow wood heavy beneath his fingers, like an old friend, and at the same time, his worst enemy.

_You can hide in the dark._

The soft rapping of knuckles on the other side of the wall startles him, and he has to stumble his way across the room before he can pull open the door, which reveals Natasha’s slightly apologetic face, and causes his own to contort into a mixture of surprise and shock.

“I - Hi.”

“Hi.” She shoves her hands in her coat pockets, peeking around his body and gesturing towards the darkness. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah, uh…yeah. Sure.” He gropes for the light as he moves aside, the room once again erupting into brightness, and notices she doesn’t choose to say anything about the fact that he was very obviously sitting alone in the gloom.

“Get lost on your way home?” He wonders if he should offer her a drink, or maybe some more food, or whatever the hell you’re supposed to offer someone after dinner if it isn’t sex. Natasha smiles, shakes her head and runs a fingerless gloved hand through her hair.

“I know how to get home. But I wanted to come here. I wanted to be with someone right now.” She looks down at the floor, one angular foot drawing circles on the hardwood. “My home is lonely, too.”

Clint feels his mouth go dry as she looks up, something honest settling in her features. “Yeah.” He throws a hand in her direction. “Well, feel free to settle in, I guess. As much as you can.”

Natasha takes off her coat, moving to the couch and sitting down, her gaze dropping to the open violin case, and he crosses the room to sit down next to her.

“What do you play?”

Clint shrugs, feeling slightly exposed, though on the surface, the question seems innocent enough. “The usuals _\- Swan Lake_. _Coppelia_. _Don Quixote_.”

“I mean when you’re not at work,” she says softly, running her fingers over the body of the instrument not unlike the same way he was doing previously. He looks down and shakes his head.

“I don’t really play here.”

She uses two fingers to lift his chin so that his eyes meet her own, then slips her feet out of her dress shoes, producing two pink pointe slippers from her bag that she expertly loops onto herself, before standing up in front of him.

“Play now,” she says softly, and Clint feels his eyes start to glass over as reaches for the violin, setting the instrument underneath his chin, one trembling hand picking up the horse-haired bow and drawing it slowly over taut, familiar strings.

In the small space of the apartment, he plays, she dances, and the night slips slowly into dawn.

**Author's Note:**

> i. I realize this doesn't quite exactly fit the initial prompt - and for that I apologize. When my muse latched onto this, it sent me on a whirlwind journey of words, and I didn't realize until I stopped that I was kind of off the mark where the specifics of this prompt were concerned. But Ballet!AUs deserve all the love, and I loved writing this, so I hope it sufficed.
> 
> ii. [Bird's Milk Cake](http://www.skinnyscoop.com/listitem/49866/24647/ptichye-moloko-cake-recipe-bird8217s-milk-cake) \- Like Clint, I've never had it, but I want it.


End file.
